The Financier by Theodore Dreiser

“Don’t talk nonsense at this stage, Harper,” replied Cowperwood almost testily. “I know whether I’m satisfied or not, and I’d soon tell you if I wasn’t. I think you might as well go on and see if you can find some definite grounds for carrying it to the Supreme Court, but meanwhile I’ll begin my sentence. I suppose Payderson will be naming a day to have me brought before him now shortly.”

“It depends on how you’d like to have it, Frank. I could get a stay of sentence for a week maybe, or ten days, if it will do you any good. Shannon won’t make any objection to that, I’m sure.

There’s only one hitch. Jaspers will be around here tomorrow looking for you. It’s his duty to take you into custody again, once he’s notified that your appeal has been denied. He’ll be wanting to lock you up unless you pay him, but we can fix that.

If you do want to wait, and want any time off, I suppose he’ll arrange to let you out with a deputy; but I’m afraid you’ll have to stay there nights. They’re pretty strict about that since that Albertson case of a few years ago.”

Steger referred to the case of a noted bank cashier who, being let out of the county jail at night in the alleged custody of a deputy, was permitted to escape. There had been emphatic and severe condemnation of the sheriff’s office at the time, and since then, repute or no repute, money or no money, convicted criminals were supposed to stay in the county jail at night at least.

Cowperwood meditated this calmly, looking out of the lawyer’s window into Second Street. He did not much fear anything that might happen to him in Jaspers’s charge since his first taste of that gentleman’s hospitality, although he did object to spending nights in the county jail when his general term of imprisonment was being reduced no whit thereby. All that he could do now in connection with his affairs, unless he could have months of freedom, could be as well adjusted from a prison cell as from his Third Street office—not quite, but nearly so. Anyhow, why parley? He was facing a prison term, and he might as well accept it without further ado. He might take a day or two finally to look after his affairs; but beyond that, why bother?

“When, in the ordinary course of events, if you did nothing at all, would I come up for sentence?”

“Oh, Friday or Monday, I fancy,” replied Steger. “I don’t know what move Shannon is planning to make in this matter. I thought I’d walk around and see him in a little while.”

“I think you’d better do that,” replied Cowperwood. “Friday or Monday will suit me, either way. I’m really not particular.

Better make it Monday if you can. You don’t suppose there is any way you can induce Jaspers to keep his hands off until then? He knows I’m perfectly responsible.”

“I don’t know, Frank, I’m sure; I’ll see. I’ll go around and talk to him to-night. Perhaps a hundred dollars will make him relax the rigor of his rules that much.”

Cowperwood smiled grimly.

“I fancy a hundred dollars would make Jaspers relax a whole lot of rules,” he replied, and he got up to go.

Steger arose also. “I’ll see both these people, and then I’ll call around at your house. You’ll be in, will you, after dinner?”

“Yes.”

They slipped on their overcoats and went out into the cold February day, Cowperwood back to his Third Street office, Steger to see Shannon and Jaspers.

Chapter XLIX

The business of arranging Cowperwood’s sentence for Monday was soon disposed of through Shannon, who had no personal objection to any reasonable delay.

Steger next visited the county jail, close on to five o’clock, when it was already dark. Sheriff Jaspers came lolling out from his private library, where he had been engaged upon the work of cleaning his pipe.

“How are you, Mr. Steger?” he observed, smiling blandly. “How are you? Glad to see you. Won’t you sit down? I suppose you’re round here again on that Cowperwood matter. I just received word from the district attorney that he had lost his case.”

“That’s it, Sheriff,” replied Steger, ingratiatingly. “He asked me to step around and see what you wanted him to do in the matter.

Judge Payderson has just fixed the sentence time for Monday morning at ten o’clock. I don’t suppose you’ll be much put out if he doesn’t show up here before Monday at eight o’clock, will you, or Sunday night, anyhow? He’s perfectly reliable, as you know.” Steger was sounding Jaspers out, politely trying to make the time of Cowperwood’s arrival a trivial matter in order to avoid paying the hundred dollars, if possible. But Jaspers was not to be so easily disposed of.

His fat face lengthened considerably. How could Steger ask him such a favor and not even suggest the slightest form of remuneration?

“It’s ag’in’ the law, Mr. Steger, as you know,” he began, cautiously and complainingly. “I’d like to accommodate him, everything else being equal, but since that Albertson case three years ago we’ve had to run this office much more careful, and—”

“Oh, I know, Sheriff,” interrupted Steger, blandly, “but this isn’t an ordinary case in any way, as you can see for yourself. Mr.

Cowperwood is a very important man, and he has a great many things to attend to. Now if it were only a mere matter of seventy-five or a hundred dollars to satisfy some court clerk with, or to pay a fine, it would be easy enough, but—” He paused and looked wisely away, and Mr. Jaspers’s face began to relax at once. The law against which it was ordinarily so hard to offend was not now so important. Steger saw that it was needless to introduce any additional arguments.

“It’s a very ticklish business, this, Mr. Steger,” put in the sheriff, yieldingly, and yet with a slight whimper in his voice.

“If anything were to happen, it would cost me my place all right.

I don’t like to do it under any circumstances, and I wouldn’t, only I happen to know both Mr. Cowperwood and Mr. Stener, and I like ‘em both. I don’ think they got their rights in this matter, either. I don’t mind making an exception in this case if Mr.

Cowperwood don’t go about too publicly. I wouldn’t want any of the men in the district attorney’s office to know this. I don’t suppose he’ll mind if I keep a deputy somewhere near all the time for looks’ sake. I have to, you know, really, under the law. He won’t bother him any. Just keep on guard like.” Jaspers looked at Mr. Steger very flatly and wisely—almost placatingly under the circumstances—and Steger nodded.

“Quite right, Sheriff, quite right. You’re quite right,” and he drew out his purse while the sheriff led the way very cautiously back into his library.

“I’d like to show you the line of law-books I’m fixing up for myself in here, Mr. Steger,” he observed, genially, but meanwhile closing his fingers gently on the small roll of ten-dollar bills Steger was handing him. “We have occasional use for books of that kind here, as you see. I thought it a good sort of thing to have them around.” He waved one arm comprehensively at the line of State reports, revised statutes, prison regulations, etc., the while he put the money in his pocket and Steger pretended to look.

“A good idea, I think, Sheriff. Very good, indeed. So you think if Mr. Cowperwood gets around here very early Monday morning, say eight or eight-thirty, that it will be all right?”

“I think so,” replied the sheriff, curiously nervous, but agreeable, anxious to please. “I don’t think that anything will come up that will make me want him earlier. If it does I’ll let you know, and you can produce him. I don’t think so, though, Mr. Steger; I think everything will be all right.” They were once more in the main hall now. “Glad to have seen you again, Mr. Steger—very glad,” he added. “Call again some day.”

Waving the sheriff a pleasant farewell, he hurried on his way to Cowperwood’s house.

You would not have thought, seeing Cowperwood mount the front steps of his handsome residence in his neat gray suit and well-cut overcoat on his return from his office that evening, that he was thinking that this might be his last night here. His air and walk indicated no weakening of spirit. He entered the hall, where an early lamp was aglow, and encountered “Wash” Sims, an old negro factotum, who was just coming up from the basement, carrying a bucket of coal for one of the fireplaces.

“Mahty cold out, dis evenin’, Mistah Coppahwood,” said Wash, to whom anything less than sixty degrees was very cold. His one regret was that Philadelphia was not located in North Carolina, from whence he came.